"One has to wonder if all the governors (including our own governor here in New Mexico, I am ashamed to say) and congressmen voting to keep out the Syrian refugees have ever visited the Statue, or read the words on her base," Martin wrote. "If so, they surely failed to understand them."

Martin pointed to specific lines from the poem that underscored his point: The U.S. is a place that has always welcomed those without home.

Though Martin ended his post by saying that Donald Trump and the U.S. governors have it "wrong, wrong, wrong," and that his hometown of Santa Fe, New Mexico, would welcome those refugees fleeing ISIS, his fight continued against angry commenters who slammed the author's views.

One commenter wrote, "[t}hat a writer so good at teasing out the moral complexity of complicated situations in his books has such a simplistic view of a real world issue, where real lives are at steak [sic]. Surprised and disappointed."

Martin replied, "Real lives are at stake. The lives of hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees driven from their homes by war. Many of them women and children. That's the whole point. There's a moral imperative here."

"The words on the Statue of Liberty were written before we had a welfare state," he wrote. "If you want them so much, why don't you let them stay at your house and you can pay for their medical bills. I'm sure you can afford it."

Martin shot back, "History has demonstrated many times that immigrants revitalize a society, and create much more than they take. The sort of 'they are just a bunch of lazy leeches' sentiment you are expressing here was also directed at the Irish, the Italians, the Germans, the Polish, the Chinese, and many other immigrant groups in the past, all of whom over time have vastly enriched the culture of America. I have no doubt that the same will prove true of the Syrians."

As of press time, Martin's blog had over three full pages of comments. He was still responding to some of them.